Sanchayan Banerjee
King's College London
Research Interests: Behavioural Economics, Environmental Economics, Experimental Economics, Public Policy.
Areas of focus: Food Policy, Energy Policy, Charitable Donations, Ethics, Public Health, Virtual Reality and AI.
I am an Associate Professor of Economics & Public Policy at the School for Government in The Policy Institute in King's College London. Currently, I am also a Visiting Professor at the Grenoble-IAE (Graduate School of Management), Université Grenoble Alpes. I act as the Academic Lead for Professional Education for the Policy Institute in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy. I am a visiting fellow of the London School of Economics, and an affiliate of the Institute for Environmental Studies and Amsterdam Sustainability Institute at VU Amsterdam. My research focusses on developing citizen-oriented, participatory, behavioural public policies and testing their effectiveness and legitimacy using experiments (lab, online and field). I have developed the NUDGE+ framework with Peter John. I co-lead the NWO ALIGN4energy (5.7 mn Euros) research project in the Netherlands. I sit on the editorial board of Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS One, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. I was a co-editor of the New Voices section in Behavioural Public Policy. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor (tenured) of Behavioural and Environmental Economics at VU Amsterdam (2022-2024). I hold a PhD (2022) and MSc (2018) from the London School of Economics. I am Indian by birth and nationality and 29 years old.
Other current appointments: Advisory Board Member, Department of Economics, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan; Quality Assurance Board Member, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Panel member, Belgian Science Policy Office, Federal Science Policy in Belgiun (BELSPO).
Published in Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine. What Nudges You to Take a Vaccine? Understanding Behavioural Drivers of COVID-19 Vaccinations using Large-Scale Experiments in the G-7 Countries. Joint with Manu Savani, Richard Koenig, John McAndrews, Blake Lee-Whiting, Andrew Hunter, Peter John, Peter John Loewen, & Brendan Nyhan.
Published in Environmental and Resource Economics. Kahneman’s insights for climate risks: Lessons from bounded rationality, heuristics and biases. Joint with Wouter Botzen and Louison Thepaut.
Published in Food Policy. Meat taxes are inevitable, yet we seem to shy away from them. But why?
Published in Scientific Reports. Virtual Reality is Only Mildly Effective in Improving Forest Conservation Behaviors. Joint with Alipio Ferreira.
Published in Frontiers in Behavioural Economics. Harnessing pluralism in behavioural public policy requires insights from computational social science. Joint with Giuseppe A Veltri.
Published in Behavioural Public Policy. Kahneman's Tryst with Reasonableness: A Tease Unfulfilled?. Joint with Malte Dold.
Published in Scientific Reports. "Nudging against consent is effective but lowers welfare." Joint with Mollie Gerver & Peter John.
Special Issue, co-edited by me (+others), now out in Behavioural Public Policy. Check out our introduction to the special issue.
Published in Behavioural Public Policy. It's time we put agency in behavioural public policy. Joint with Till Grüne-Yanoff, Peter John and Alice Moseley.
Published in PNAS nexus. "Thinking about default enrollment lowers vaccination intentions and public support in G7 countries." Joint with Richard Koenig, Manu Savani, John McAndrews, Blake Lee-Whiting, Andrew Hunter, Peter John, Peter John Loewen, & Brendan Nyhan.
Published in Environmental Research Communications. "Pledging After Nudging Improves Uptake of Plant-based Diets: a Field Experiment in a German University Cafeteria". Joint with Philipp Thamer & Peter John.
Published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. "The future of experimental design: Integrative, but is the sample diverse enough?". Joint with Sakshi Ghai.
Published in Scientific Reports. "Public support for more stringent vaccine policies increases with vaccine effectiveness.". Joint with Richard Koenig, Manu Savani, John McAndrews, Blake Lee-Whiting, Andrew Hunter, Peter John, Peter John Loewen, & Brendan Nyhan.
Published in Nature Sustainability. "Sustainable dietary choices improved by reflection before a nudge in an online experiment". Joint with Matteo Galizzi, Peter John, & Susana Mourato.
I will be hosting the Behavioural Transformations workshop in London (9-10 June, 2025) and the Behavioural Insight for Policy workshop in Moldova (3-4 July, 2025). See Outreach for details.
I will be hosting the Annual IBPPC 2025 in London in September (10-12), 2025. See Outreach for details.
I was granted tenure in April 2024 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 🎉. I joined King's College London in November 2024.
My research was recently featured by UN Academic Impact. It's here
I was recently interviewed for the Dutch National Meat Less Week. It's here.
I was interviewed by The Times UK. It's here.
I was caught on a podcast recently. It's here.
I will be visiting the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Appliquées à la Gestion (CERAG) at the Grenoble IAE - INP Graduate School of Management. I will be hosted by Chairs of Marketing, Professor Marie-Laure GAVART- PERRET and Marie-Claire Wilhelm between 28 March and 30 April 2025.
I will also be visiting the Olli-Pekka Ruuskanen, Director of the Pellervo Economic Research PTT, and Paula Salo, Department of Psychology, University of Turku between 15-23 May 2025.
I have been awarded a NIAA grant with Dr. Charlotte Gerritsen (VU Amsterdam) for a VR project titled "Visualising the Future"
I have been awarded an ASI Seed Grant 2023 on "empowering climate education".
I have been awarded a Dutch Starting Grant (€300K), with Thales Pupo West, to improve uptake of voluntary offsets for food emissions using BPPs.
I have started and will be teaching the VU Amsterdam Winter School on "Behavioural Public Policy". (Update: This course has now ended but there will be a version 2.0 soon).
Interests
Behavioural Economics
Experimental Economics
Environmental Economics
Health Policy
Climate Policy
Behavioural Insights for Policy
Secondary Affiliations
LSE Psychology and Behavioural Science
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Higher Education Academy (Advance HE)
Memberships
IBPPA, AEA, EEA, APA D34
Education
BKO (University Teaching Qualification)
VU Amsterdam, 2023
PhD, Behavioural & Environmental Economics
London School of Economics, 2022
PG Certificate (masters), Higher Education
London School of Economics, 2021
MPhil, Environmental Economics
London School of Economics, 2019
MSc, Environmental Economics and Climate Change
London School of Economics 2018
BA, Economics
Jadavpur University, 2017
Sanchayan Banerjee 2021